I started watching the Snowden (2016) movie the other day, and got to the point about explanation of XKEYSCORE. The whole time I was thinking “how quaint, that this was such a shockingly abusive system at the time”. We’ve crossed the threshold long ago. We’re so far gone that it’s just taken for granted that we’re always being watched, everywhere. I stopped watching the film because it was really bumming me out. There’s nothing we can do about it and it’s so very sad.
Nothing about the Snowden revelations presented such an easy target. There was no obvious action against it for juries to nullify. If there were companies whose bottom lines we could target, it's not clear which companies they were.
we use communication systems. we can for example encrypt our comms. interestingly, most messaging platforms become owners of 'our identity' and the friend mesh. if we start decentralizing the idea of identity and friend mesh, and it becomes privately managed, and not externally managed, perhaps we can hop from messaging system to messaging system with more ease, and if so, perhaps we can become more free as a society. losing the equivalent of a 'facebook' account should be a minor inconvenience, not a tragic event. we should encourage people we communicate with, to become more aware and more deeply conscious of privacy, encryption, identity, and to have some healthy distrust for the potential abuses of the state.
I agree with everything you say, but we are a small minority in society and shifting the public off of the centralized hubs onto decentralized private secure mesh is an insurmountable task. The public simply won't budge. If I can't get my immediate family to switch, that is a good indicator of the likelihood of everyone else switching.
